Island Wise

Stimulate your summer with book arts.

Image: Shantel Grace

The Language of Mark Making

by S.G. | Jul 11, 2012

Lynn Young makes books. A poet and visual artist, Young’s passion for book-making has turned into scores of fans begging her to teach the craft. She listened. In her upcoming workshop, Drawing is Another Kind of Language, you’ll get a chance to not only view some of Young’s handmade treasures, but also delve into the precious medium of paper arts.

“Every mark has a force, direction, speed, density, scale and texture,” Young says when describing the workshop. “In this class, participants will explore the expressive qualities of mark-making and fold (literally) those explorations into a simple, visual book. Come prepared to mess around.”

This is an introductory workshop, hosted by the M.I.A. Art & Literary Series as part of their Summer Hiatus Sessions, but if you’re interested in exploring the potent word/image/book combination in more depth, Young will be teaching “Side by Side,” a class that combines creative writing and visual art exercises with book-making this summer and fall at the Honolulu Museum of Art School ([honolulumuseum.org]). And if you’re just looking to purchase one of Young’s books–might as well forget it, for now.

“I’m slow,” she says. “Right now it’s more fun to just make them and give them away.”